Colloquium: Alexander Warmuth (AIP)

Early results from STIX and Solar Orbiter

The ESA space mission Solar Orbiter was successfully launched on February 10th, 2020, from Cape Canaveral. Its purpose is to improve our understanding of how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, which includes studying the nature of the solar dynamo, the origins of the solar wind and coronal magnetic fields, and the physics of solar eruptions and particle acceleration. To achieve this, the mission combines unique characteristics: a close approach to the Sun (0.28 AU perihelion), leaving the ecliptic plane in the later mission phase, and a comprehensive suit of 6 remote-sensing and 4 in-situ instruments. AIP is involved in two of these instruments: the X-ray telescope STIX and the energetic particle detector EPD.

From launch to the first and only Earth flyby on November 26th, 2021, Solar Orbiter has been in its cruise phase, during which all instruments were successfully commissioned. Although the science phase of the mission has only just started, there are already first results from the cruise phase. In this talk, I will discuss some of these early results. In particular, I will focus on observations from our X-ray telescope STIX, for which I will both show some early results and discuss the future prospects for the science phase.

• Date:
  Dec. 2, 2021, 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
  
  
• Location:

  Colloquium Zoom room

  
  
• Contact:
  Silva Järvinen